leave me my death
by flesh and bone telephone
Summary: Look at all that your selfishness has wrought. — Amara, Tatia, Katerina, Elena. For queenregnant


**disclaimer:** will probs own tvd someday.  
**dedication:** for queenregnant who begged for a petrova peice in the tvd fiacthon tag and promised baked goods and her firstborn for anyone who undertook the prompt. so i'm expecting you guys to stick up for me in court when i need to legally claim those things, okay? okay.  
**warning:** SHORT. and NOT A PAIRING PIECE (at least not really, only cannon implied pairings mentioned in passing)  
**notes:** unfamiliar territory, i love katherine to death and would write for her a thousand times over, but it was a little new to try and pin tatia and amara down, i think i did elena okay? also, again, short, and rushed and probs ooc but i tried okay. A. FOR EFFORT.  
**tvd ficathon prompt**: "Petrova doppelgangers, _"leave me my death - let me hold this one thing sacred and unmolested and secret"_"

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_leave me my death_

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She realized - as all girls so foolish to be charmed by a beautiful face and the soft words uttered by their owners - that the moment she saw him was the moment her heart stopped being her own. No one told her though, that that had meant her life, too.

Her life was forfeit the moment he laid eyes on her. It was a ruin to be repeated over centuries and turns of the millennium.

Girl, they said, you belong to the universe, you are a creature of blood, and an instrument of destruction. Your love has destroyed the world, and your foolishness has doomed the lives after yours. You are the sparker of whole civilizations and the destroyer of them, _look at all that your selfishness has wrought._

In death that was denied her she might put down her face, and in that cruel turning of time another one might pick it up. A curse handed down. It was a poor inheritance.

Very poor indeed.

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Tatia's mistake was not that she was too pretty, it was that she was an indecisive soul. She couldn't decide between either of them. They both claimed to love her so utterly, the older one with the spine of steel whose passions only _she_ could invoke, it was a _power_ only she was allowed over him - and then the younger one who was so rash, and would be a brilliant lover were he not so selfish, were he not so unused to being given that when met with the nights she allowed him he couldn't help but take _everything._

_My life begins and ends with yours,_ they both told her, the message the same, despite the variation of wording and poetry. They all meant the same stupid, blind devotion. So true and so earnest.

The blade that came for her throat meant that Tatia was too dead to tell them that it was not so, those foolish boys.

_No_, she wanted to whisper in the darkness of hell, _Your life begins with my end._

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Circumstances have ripped from Katerina more than she has deserved, they have taken from her her child, they have plundered her womb, and hurled her out of her home. _Whore._

It is too painful to mourn that, when she leaves that place and follows into some semblance of happiness she makes use of the mantle. She reminds them that she is beautiful, that she is wild, and she is - most importantly - _free._

Elijah traces the bone work of her face, his solemn eyes full of a wonder he just barely hides from her. She feels less like a person and more like a work of art, it was wonderful at fist because she thought that meant he could want her and if he wanted her he could at least keep her safe.

Klaus bends around her, observing at all angles like he would a forgery that is impressive in skill but ultimately still that, a _forgery_ - and he looks at her the fond way he looks at something he owns, a means to an end, a tool that will at least look pretty sitting around the fire place until he has use for it.

They mean to use her death, to slit her throat and _that_ she cannot allow. This face that is not hers, that has _never_been hers, this ghost of love Elijah feels for her because it is misplaced hurts her more than it should, and it harms her own vanity for she is vain and she is powerful and her beauty _is_ her tool, she was always the most beautiful girl back home, and it is alien to find that the beauty is not even hers - and that infuriates her, it _mobilizes_ her.

They mean to send her white and glistening to the slaughter, they mean to have her bend her head and _allow_ it.

Katherine slips the noose around her throat, adrenaline burns fire in her veins, and she is full of fear and defiance and the front of her dress is red red _red._ She steps off the table realizing that she is leaping into a war far greater than she can outrun.

But they cannot have her life, and she will run and elude them, she will teach them their own lessons about being clever and opportunistic and _deceptive._

Katerina raises her fists to heaven, to the wrath of those Gods who walk the earth, who want her life, bears her teeth and hisses hell on the woman who owned this face. Who _gave_ her this curse.

_She will die when she wants and no sooner._

Katerina Petrova steps off the table with a light dancer's foot, the rope goes taught.

She emerges on the other side as Katherine Pierce.

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Elena's compassion is a thing of legend, really. Whatever the sacrifice, she's determined to step forward and take the hit, to lay her life on the sword for the sake of those she loves, survivor's guilt is a real thing, and she is tired of it crippling her, she can _use_ death. It's _hers_, she can choose _who_ to lay it down _for._

It is certainly not to be given as gift to mad millennium old vampires, nor be a temporary respite of blackness before the madness of eternal life as a vampire after Damon (so determined to destroy anyone and_ anything_ to keep her alive) inevitably finds a way to turn her.

Water bursts out of her lungs and she is ripped out of the darkness like a rag-doll into a dog fight, and she is gasping and spluttering and _reeling_ because the mortuary is _freezing_, the cold metal chills her back like the naked press of a blade and there is a burning in her throat that feels like acid.

She had wanted it to _mean_ something, she'd chosen _Matt_ - she'd told Stefan to save _him_, she'd made the sacrifice, she'd wanted to go back there into the deep dark water and sink, fall deep, and deeper still into that murky darkness _where no one could wake her._

It felt like a great cosmic joke, she couldn't even die when she wanted to. Stefan had tears in his eyes, glistening with relief, clutching at her and pulling her into him so she might never escape again.

The sob that ripped out of her had nothing to do with gratitude, and everything to do with bitter, violent _regret._

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_ - let me hold this one thing sacred,  
and unmolested,  
and  
secret._

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**end notes:** everyone go participate in the tvd ficathon tag on tumblr, suggest and answer prompts and let there be fic for all! YAY!


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